Then the warm spray in Arlie's face.
It was a remarkable feeling, like being immersed in wet clay and yielding to the gentle touch of the sculptress. The soap blanketed him, frothed over him, and all at once, everything was okay with the world. Russ Tamblyn had been right. This was the greatest possible thing that could have happened, and Arlie began to silently thank God.
There was a sudden crash out in the living room. Glass breaking, and shuffling sounds.
"Oh my God!"
The water stopped. Goose bumps crawled across Arlie's face. An arm smashed up against him, covering him with a towel, and then Bertha-Lou was moving toward the window. "Ohmygod — NO!!" She tried the bathroom window, but it was welded shut with coats of paint and calk. "It's him, it's him, IT'S HIM —!!" She shrieked and ran out of the bathroom.
Arlie struggled to see the monstrous figure coming down the hallway.
Coming into focus through the tunnel of Arlie's vision was the worse thing he had ever seen. A figure in a soiled tab collar shirt, wrinkled chinos and brand new saddle shoes, staggering blindly down the hall, zombie arms outstretched. It was human in every way except the head. Rooted on the stalk of its neck, melded in some unearthly graft, was a great fleshy orb. A breast. Bertha-Lou Bizzel's left bosom, to be exact. It came forth like a pathetic, mute supplicant, seeking its goddess.
"LEAVE ME ALONE —!"
Arlie could hear the madness in Bertha-Lou's scream, as she lunged through her bedroom door, clawing at her clothes and the things on her dresser. Bottles of Estee Lauder and Kewpie dolls and Jerry Vale records skittered to the carpet. The monster was coming through the door. Bertha-Lou finally managed to grab a Zippo and a spritz bottle of Evening in Paris cologne.
She aimed the aerosol spray at the thing with no eyes and sparked the lighter.
"DIE YOU FUCKER!"
A tendril of blue fire leapt from the cologne bottle and bullwhipped the monster. The thing staggered. Flames curled around its fleshy, globular head, and a spurt of agony hissed from its teat. Then the fire bloomed, licking down its shirttails and trousers. The thing collapsed and sparks geysered off cross the doorway.
Run, Bertha-Lou!
Arlie's silent scream reverberated down through the woman's marrow.
Bertha-Lou spun, scooped up a terrycloth robe and lurched at her back window. It took her a split second to pry open the pane and climb out. She pulled the robe on and staggered across the finely trimmed lawn toward the tree line. The sound of wood crackling and flames gobbling up the air came trailing after her. She got another few feet and tripped on a log.
She went down hard.
It wasn't until the inferno was out of control, filling the air with violent noise and light, that Arlie realized Bertha-Lou had fainted dead away. In her frenzy, and subsequent fall, her robe had slipped open. And now Arlie was exposed for all the neighbors and fireman to see. That wouldn't do, that simply wouldn't do.
Cover me, Bertha-Lou, please, it's cold.
Nothing, no movement. The sounds of sirens were looming now, and the voices of neighbors were gathering across the fence. Soon the place would be crawling with people. Arlie concentrated carefully, thinking the words.
Cover me up, please, Bertha-Lou.
The fingers fluttered for a moment, blindly, then the arm swung up and shoved the robe closed. Just like that. Then the hand fell like a dead bird on the lawn.
Arlie silently thanked God, and rejoiced.
As the emergency units arrived and the neighbors gathered and the scene erupted with voices and noise, Arlie let the invisible tears of joy come for his new life. There was no turning back now. His secret dream had come true.
At last, he was whole.
STASH
Let's get the names out of the way:
Douche bag
El Douche
Douchey-Douche
Son of Douche
Douche Junior
These were the ones he remembered.
There were more, although he'd blocked most of them out of his memory. His gym teacher in the sixth grade, Mr. Blundy, called him Lil Douche, which, at the time, was as humiliating as any of the others, but over the years had kind of grown on him. Lil Douche has a certain hip-hoppy ring to it. Like an opening act for P-Diddy or Old Dirty Bastard. Or maybe the Massengil Summer Reggae Festival. All of which would be great were he not the whitest dude you'll ever meet. A man without roots, without an identity.
A product of state orphanages, Guy Fox was adopted as a toddler and grew up in Caucasian Land (actually Grand Rapids, Michigan). He was weaned listening to the New Christy Minstrels and eating Baloney sandwiches slathered in mayonnaise. He went to an expensive Episcopalian prep school where the only black student was a light skinned Cuban boy named Pierre LaFontant whose blackest act was wearing a Sears Dashiki and playing Harry 'Belafonte's "Banana Boat Song" after lights-out. By the time Guy had made it to the University of Michigan, he was a fully fledged honky motherfucker, from his Ivy League haircut down to his I-zod chinos and top-siders. He looked like an ad for Eddie Bauer's Young Republican Resort Wear.
Maybe that was why he eventually came up with the Porno Pal System. Maybe it was all about rebellion. Or maybe he wanted to do something black. Something earthy and dangerous and subversive and cool.
Chances are, though, it was simply a way to thumb his lily white nose at his adopted dad.
"Where are you?" Guy snapped at his cell, gripping the phone tightly with one hand as he steered the car with the other. He was on the outer drive, skimming over parched pavement, heading north, preparing to clean up another mess in a home on the north shore of Chicago.
It was a gray September day, the sky low and scudded with dark clouds. To Guy's right stretched the endless mercurial waters of Lake Michigan, and to his left the canyons of cloistered condos known as Lincoln Park. Guy had both the air conditioning and a Korn CD blasting, and the cumulative din was making it hard to hear his partner.
"I'm almost there," the voice crackled. It belonged to Bobby Dutchik. Guy's Pal Friday since high school, Bobby made up for his room temperature IQ with a certain kind of sweetness that Guy had yet to encounter in any other straight, white, middleclass, horny males.
"Well don't do anything until I get there," Guy instructed, glancing at his watch. "It's not even 2:00 o'clock yet."
"Didn't the contract say the funeral was like from 1:00 to 4:00?"
"2:00 to 4:00," Guy corrected him.
"Sorry."
"Don't sweat it, I'll be there in a nanosecond. Just sit in your car, do some crossword puzzles."
Bobby assured Guy that he would do just that, and Guy disconnected the cell.
It took Guy a little over twenty minutes to find the address. Working off the contract, as well as the attached map, he located the huge Queen Anne at the end of a tree-shrouded street near the lake. Way upper class neighborhood. Cobblestones, mansions, security systems up the ying yang.
Guy parked his car half a block away and strolled over to the client's wrought iron gate with his official-looking blue uniform shirt buttoned to the collar, and his official-looking clipboard tucked under his arm. It was standard work attire. Never failed to blend in. Guy was just some guy showing up to install a satellite dish or change a furnace filter. Rich people are used to this kind of crapola. On top of that, Guy Fox's physique had become about as non-threatening as a physique can be. Soft, pale, a little paunchy around the middle, he looked like an accountant or an actuary who'd been staring at so many spreadsheets, his own sheets had started to spread.
"Hey, G, you made it!" Bobby Dutchik called out as Guy approached the entrance gate. Bobby was leaning against the wrought iron fence in his own fake blue uniform, whistling absently, a tall, rangy man, his buggy eyes magnified by Coke bottle glasses.
"All set?" Guy said as he looked for the key pad that was supposed to be a few inches to the left of the gate's lock. Bobby said sure, everything was copasetic, as Guy consulted the co
ntract for the proper code.
They opened the gate, strolled up the gorgeous herringbone brick sidewalk, and entered the house through the front door using the key that had been enclosed with the contract packet.
It's strange: When there's a death in a family, an empty home somehow seems to be more silent than your average empty home. Guy never mentioned this observation to Bobby —Guy wasn't even sure Bobby would get it—but Guy noticed it every time he entered a client's domicile. This house was no different. The front foyer was huge, with a soaring vaulted ceiling and sky lights, and as quiet as a 'pharaoh's tomb. The rest of the house was straight out of Architectural Digest. Expensive furniture, meticulous decor. Lush greenery everywhere. Guy couldn't remember what the client's job had been: Heart surgeon, CEO, something like that. It wasn't important.
They put on their surgical gloves and went about their business with minimal conversation or fuss. Guy kept the floor plan handy, and Bobby carried the canvas tent bag. (Over the years, they had learned through trial and error that plastic garbage bags are woefully ill-suited for this work; pornography can be heavy, and have sharp edges.)
On the second floor, at the end of the hall, as notated in the contract, they found the client's home office. The air smelled faintly of stale smoke and aftershave in there, and there was something vaguely poignant about the clutter. This was another thing Guy had noticed over the years: Old, white, rich, married men always have home offices, or rumpus rooms, or dens, or whatever, where they go to be alone. Maybe this was the secret to a happy marriage. A husband having a masculine place in which to retire after dinner each night, a place of dark leather upholstery and English fox hunt wallpaper within which a man can smoke a cigar and drink a Scotch and think deep thoughts about sports or cars.
This office was a prime example: The decedent's big oak desk was front row center, surrounded by golf trinkets, bowling trophies, model trains and framed prints of Norman Rockwell paintings. Behind the sofa, under a false floorboard, Guy found a cardboard file box full of Hustlers, Barely Legals, Screws, Beaver Hunts, Naughty Nymphs, School Girl Pussies, and Awesome Asian Ass's. He carefully transferred the well-thumbed magazines to the canvas bag, and moved on.
The whole removal session took less than half an hour. In the basement powder room, behind a cadenza brimming with photos of grandchildren, Guy removed a peach crate filled with dozens of videotapes, mostly fetish stuff, Oriental Ass Reamers 17 and Butt Man Goes to College Volumes 1 through 23. In the attic, nestled in the bottom of a moth-ball redolent trunk, underneath long forgotten sleeping bags and musty hunting gear, Bobby found vintage magazines and paperbacks with titles such as The Big Suck-Off and Mona Takes a Pony Ride. By the time they were done, the canvas bag was filled to the straining point. Bobby guessed it weighed at least a hundred and fifty pounds. Which was about right for a man who had lived a full life well into his seventies. A couple pounds of porno for every year. That was just about the norm, Guy had noticed: a magazine a month.
They made their final sweep, and everything looked good. They left the house just as they had found it.
On his way out the front door, Guy felt a wave of satisfaction rise through him. The day had turned mild, the sun burning off the clouds, and now the sky was high and blue over the north shore as he walked back to his car. But best of all: Guy had completed another job without incident. He had removed a deceased man's pornography promptly and professionally, before his wife or mother or daughter or granddaughter had a chance to stumble upon it and suffer mixed emotions about their dearly departed. Guy had discreetly cleansed a man's home, leaving behind nothing but Norman Rockwell, grinning grandchildren, and mothball perfumed trunks. And for the survivors, Guy had insured a period of simple, focused, undiluted, healing grief.
Grief without embarrassment.
"You going back to the office?" Bobby asked, tossing the canvas bag into his trunk. Bobby was supposed to stop at the dump incinerator on his way back to the shop, destroying all the smut—which Guy referred to in his company literature as 'retrieval materials' — in order to insure that no evidence would survive. But Guy was painfully aware that Bobby often stopped off at his apartment first to cherry pick whatever goodies might be of interest to him. He thought he was pulling a fast one on Guy, but Guy didn't care. Since becoming impotent a couple of years ago, Guy Fox couldn't begrudge a man his vices.
"Yeah, we got a customer coming in at 3:00 for a prospectus," Guy replied, glancing at his watch. "Then we got the Douche King coming over tonight for dinner."
Bobby cringed. "Ouch."
"Yeah, well... anyway... good job today, Bobby. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Seeya, Guy."
Guy walked the rest of the way to his car marveling at how fast a good mood can evaporate when his dad's name is invoked.
Guy's dad was indeed the Douche King.
In fact, no less an authority than Fortune Magazine dubbed the elder Fox exactly that in a cover story in the late eighties.
When Guy was adopted in 1961 — a former ward of the Department of Children and Family Services who would turn out to be his parents' only child — his father was in senior management at Parke-Davis Pharmaceuticals, working on new feminine hygiene products and being groomed for a top slot in the organization. But his masterpiece was the Daisy-Fresh. The world's first pre-mixed, pre-measured, non-allergenic disposable douche. The product was a blockbuster, bumping up the parent company's stock by a hundred and seventy-five bucks per share the first fiscal quarter alone, and alleviating women around the world of that not-so-fresh feeling.
Guy was only seven years old at the time this windfall came, and a seven year old former orphan with self-esteem problems is not exactly cognizant of all the financial implications of such success. Little Guy Junior only noticed three things: He saw less of his father; the family started eating out more often; and people at school started making fun of Guy. Maybe the experience hardened him. Looking back on it, he wasn't sure. But one thing was certain: It made him awkward with women. Hindered by the terrible knowledge that his dad—the man Guy saw each evening trimming his nose hairs and excavating toe jam — was in fact spending each day pondering vaginal odors, Guy was a complete disaster with girls.
He fared a little better in college—perhaps because of the widened proximity from his father — but still couldn't shake the Douche King curse. "Oh my God, that's where I heard your name before," they would intone as soon as Guy got them into bed. "Your dad's the douche guy. I'm wearing him right now. As we speak! I've got your dad inside me! Isn't that amazing? Your dad is in my vagina right at this moment! He's down there! Right now! He's there! Unbelievable."
Thank God Guy finally met Karen.
Karen was his savior—in a literal and religious sense. She was his Goddess. An English Lit geek at U of M, she was one of those girls with the skinny horn-rims and tattooed ankles who always seem like they're in on something that you aren't. Karen was the perfect girl friend because she had an aversion to toiletries of any kind. A hirsute girl, she let her armpits and legs go untrimmed, and eschewed all feminine hygiene products.
Guy and Karen were married a month after graduation, and moved to Chicago to look for actual jobs. Karen was the one with credentials that meant anything — a BA in English and a BS in Special Education—and she landed a job right out of the gate at a prestigious private school on the north shore called Blessed Virgin Mother Mary of the Universal Immaculate Conception. In her spare time, she crafted elaborate and morbid collages with the pictures of missing children cut from the sides of milk cartons. As for Guy: Let's just say his BA in 19th Century Icelandic Literature was not going to serve him in good stead at the Polo Club... unless he wanted to use his diploma to scrape smegma from the ponys' genitals. No, Guy Fox was destined for something much more... shall we say... entrepreneurial.
Which was as good a way as any to describe the kind of work he was doing at this very moment in his modest little office on Sheridan Road.
/> "Tell me how it works," the gentleman was saying, sitting across the desk from Guy.
"Of course," Guy said, then pushed himself away from his battered veneer desk and walked around to the flip chart next to the window. The office was nothing special. Three hundred square feet of carpeted space in the rear of a two-bit ambulance chasing firm just north of Chicago. An outer room with a sofa and a few magazines. A couple of landscapes on the wall. Nothing too flamboyant. Nothing to make the customer uncomfortable. After all, The Porno Pal System was all about comfort. "It's really very simple," Guy explained, pointing to a color-coded flow chart emblazoned with big symbols such as $$$ and XXX and COD. "The first payment is an initial (non-refundable) one-time fee of $1500, plus a deposit of $5000. The deposit is contractually kept in escrow until you pass away or decide to cancel the contract for any reason."
The man in the armchair, a gentleman named Herbert Cooley, was nervously nodding his head. Tall and gaunt and fidgety, with dishwater grey hair and skin so pale and wrinkled it looked almost translucent, he was obviously uneasy with this whole process. He looked to be in his 60's, although it was hard to tell for sure. He wore a short-sleeve shirt buttoned up to his shriveled Adam's apple, polyester slacks, and huge wingtips. He had dark circles under his eyes "How do you... know... the... um... location?" Cooley wanted to know.
"That's an excellent question," Guy remarked with an amiable smile, trying to put the elder man at ease. Guy had seen all types coming through this door—everybody from clergy to rap singers—and there was always this initial mixture of nervous tension and shame. "Along with the deposit, you submit floor plans of your house, along with a house key and the location of all the hiding places where the... uh... material is kept."
"I see," said Herb Cooley.
"These items are kept in a safe deposit box," Guy went on, pointing at a little illustration in the flow chart of a bank vault. "At your expense, of course, with explicit directions that the box should be opened only upon your death, and only by myself or my associate."
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